9 comments to New Vaccine Subject to Anti-Vaccine Propaganda – Shock!

Not just hardly – NOT statistically significant. The 95% confidence interval is 0.76 to 4.23. This says that there’s a pretty big chance there is no change, and even a small chance that the vaccine decreases risk compared to placebo.

Of course there is also a decent chance that if could actually increase the risk, but this data is inconclusive when it comes to that. More testing is required. Oh! they’re doing more testing? Well then, they’re doing their job.

I’d like to see the stats on gastroenteritis, and see what the possible payoff is for this vaccine, but my suspicion is that it will be much larger than the possible ill effects it can elicit. From a population standpoint, its sometimes better to risk some side effects than to leave the population unprotected against potential pathogens.

Inside Vaccines, which usually has pretty balanced information, has a good discussion on the necessity of a vaccine for the virus in general given that there are only about 20 deaths attributed to rotavirus in the US per year. His analysis was done in Feb before the more serious intussusception/convulsions/pneumonia questions were raised, only using the adverse reactions from the vaccine, vomiting, diarrhea, nasopharyngitis, and fever.

His basic conclusion was, ‘why are we vaccinating for something that only causes 20 deaths per year in this country?’ I think that question is made all the more important given the serious safety question that rotarix brings up.

And that 20 deaths per year is further put into perspective by the fact that 95% of US children have had rotavirus by the time they are 5 years old. Almost everyone gets it and almost no one dies from it.

Further, once a child has had the illness twice, they are apparently inoculated against serious diarrhea:

“…the study titled Serum antibody as a marker of protection against natural rotavirus infection and disease (6) which was published in the Journal of Infectious Disease in 2000. Apparently, children are gaining natural immunity from rotavirus after 2 consecutive infections whether or not they demonstrated symptoms.

“Protective antibody titers were achieved after 2 consecutive symptomatic or asymptomatic rotavirus infections. These findings indicate that serum anti-rotavirus antibody, especially IgA, was a marker of protection against rotavirus infection and moderate-to-severe diarrhea.”

This is supported by documents at the CDC showing that 95% of children have had rotavirus by age 5 and that after just one natural infection, 88% of children are protected against severe diarrhea.”

This is a vaccine that may have important use in third world countries where children don’t have access to potable water, basic medical care and live in unhygienic conditions, but for American kids?

And just as importantly, when a mom is in the doctors office, will she be told that the FDA has not ruled out that there may be an increased risk of death to her child from these serious side effects and that they have not actually finished safety testing it?

Because after all… this is just diarrhea we are talking about. The CDC web site recommends treating it a home with pedialyte.

There is your 20 deaths from the vaccine, and that is only in a population of less than 37,000. Looks like if that number holds up we would be trading up in deaths if this was given to the whole population.

Speaking on behalf of most pediatricians, we are all thrilled with Jenny McCarthy, Oprah, Don Imus et al for making our days significantly longer trying to discuss all of this nonsense. My favorite line I use is “I can’t speak for Jenny McCarthy’s medical degree or her molecular biology studies program, however…”

As far as what roto vaccine can help avoid, here are the number: 400,000 doctor visits, 200,000 emeergency room visits, 55,000-70,000 hospital admissions and 20-60 deaths. All of those statistics are for the United States only and the nubers come from the CDC and their vaccine information statement sheets that we are legally obligated to give to every patient that recieves any vaccine.

I argue that this isn’t a significant enough result to draw any real correlation here. The difference could be simply statistical noise and normal variation. There is also a chance you’d see just as many less die when receiving the vaccine. More testing is required to show if a real effect is occurring.